Managerial Appropriations of the Ethos of Democratic Practice: Rating, ‘Policing’, and Performance Management

Abstract

This article examines how new types of performance appraisal reconfigure everyday personal relationships at work. These systems deploy smartphone technologies to be used continuously by individuals to rate each other. Our aim is to show, in concrete terms, how these practices claim to configure a democratic space where individuals are liberated to express their views about each other’s work. On the contrary, we argue that by being placed in continuous confrontation with each other’s ratings, the genuine space for democratic contestation, for the establishment of a genuine community, as well as for critique and dissent is—paradoxically—narrowed down. The first section of this article explores the context in which managerialism has become consolidated at the centre of neo-liberal politics in a dialogue with some of Mouffe’s and Rancière’s arguments. We use Rancière’s concept of “policing” to understand how managerial techniques subvert genuine democratic spaces, modes of participation and expression. Using performance appraisal systems as an example, the second part of the article provides a critical investigation which shows how managerialism intervenes at the very roots of possible democratic engagement and undermines dissent in subtle ways.